Service Overview
Nutanix Private Cloud Disaster Recovery (DRaaS) is a Nutanix-powered platform that allows you to recover Nutanix hosted workloads on dedicated, enterprise-class hardware in the event of a disaster without the burden of maintaining the infrastructure. Expedient maintains the hardware platform, software updates, licensing, and ongoing maintenance as a managed service. Clients have full admin access to their virtual machines, along with the ability to perform many of the same operations as their on-premises Nutanix environment.
Licensing
Expedient’s Nutanix Private Cloud comes with NCI Ultimate and NCM Starter.
Disaster recovery features are under the “NCI” or Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure feature set.
See Nutanix Cloud Platform Software Options for more details.
Disaster Recovery Implications
For clients with their own Nutanix cluster replicating to an Expedient Nutanix Private Cloud:
If your cluster has NCI Ultimate, you will have full access to the disaster recovery suite.
If your cluster has NCI Starter, will not have access to the full disaster recovery suite and are limited to Protection Domains on Prism Element.
If your cluster has NCI Pro, you can use asynchronous replication (≥ 1 Hour RPO) on Prism Central or;
You can purchase the Adv Replication add-on license
Matching Features and Licensing
While Expedient clusters have NCI Ultimate, replication must be configured to match the licensing level of your Nutanix cluster.
The Advanced Replication add-on enables Advanced Orchestration (Multiple Boot Stages, Script Execution, Re-IP, Test Failover), NearSync Replication (RPO = 1-15 min.).
Starter and Pro licensing can do Async Replication (1 Hour RPO) but cannot perform test failovers.
Support Summary
Expedient-owned Nutanix Private Cloud as a Source
Expedient will configure discovery on private cloud instances, including:
Site Pairing to and from Expedient-owned private cloud instances
Configuration of Recovery Plans to orchestrate restoring protected VMs at a secondary location
Configuration of Protection Polices to automate the creation and replication of snapshots across all the clusters managed by Prism Central
Default – Async with a 3-day retention with Rollup selected. This will create 24 hourly snapshots, and 3 daily snapshots.
Assign categories to the VMs that should be protected to default Nutanix categories.
Protection Policies
Multiple policies can be configured. If you have tiered applications, for example, you could create a separate category (along with the appropriate VMs) and add it to a different stage
Client-owned Nutanix Private Cloud as a Source
Ensure availability and health of Expedient-owned target site.
Monitor target-side Availability Zone connectivity
Assist in the DR configuration on client site.
Default guidance and best practices will be provided.
DR Testing
Nutanix DR failover options are "Planned Failover", "Unplanned Failover", and "Test Failover".
Nutanix offers non-disruptive testing referred to as Validating a Recovery Plan, and an Unplanned Failover / Disruptive Test option.
Expedient will conduct DR testing on Expedient-owned Nutanix Private Cloud upon request.
Expedient will assist in DR testing for client-owned Nutanix source cluster upon request.
Clients may contact Expedient to schedule a test and at least one non-disruptive test is recommended near the end of the delivery phase.